dust and ashes

dust and ashes

Something that promises pleasure or fulfillment but results in disappointment or disillusionment. The phrase is used in the Bible to describe the unpleasant taste of an appealing-looking fruit. She was a shopaholic until she realized that material possessions are nothing but dust and ashes.

dust and ashes

used to convey a feeling of great disappointment or disillusion about something.

Often found in the fuller form turn to dust and ashes in your mouth , the phrase is used in the Bible as a metaphor for worthlessness, for example in Genesis 18:27 and the Book of Job 30:19. It derives from the legend of the Sodom apple, or Dead Sea fruit, whose attractive appearance tempted people, but which tasted only of dust and ashes when eaten.

This point is illuminated by two other biblical texts in which dust and ashes play a crucial role.

What we should make of that fact is another question, one we will take up in examining another biblical text in which dust and ashes figure prominently, the Book of Job.

An alternative translation reads, "He has flung me to the muck, and I'm a cliche, like dust and ashes.

T]herefore I despise myself, / and repent in dust and ashes.

As Miles sees the passage, though, the cause of Job's shuddering is neither Job nor God but humanity, the frail creature of God--as dust and ashes.

From now on I shall live with remorse, in dust and ashes.

s translation, in which Job despises himself and repents in dust and ashes, seems insupportable both because of its questionable insertion of the reflexive pronoun and because of its inability to explain the text's final outcome.

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